MUZZLING THE DEFENSE

Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
They Let It Happen
[undated]

Note [added 2/8/09] While I am leaving this post up as-is and FWIW, the core point of it - the apparent "muzzling" represented by the 2001 order - seems to have been debunked. See Mike W's 9/11 Myths page. What I'd previously read as an exception to new restrictions was actually THE change to a MORE restrictive previous order. Good thing I had already called it a red herring, rather than hanging any weight on the issue. So for the record - the June 1 change can have had no direct role in impeding the 9/11 defense, and so it's implementation is not direct evidence of any LIHOP thinking. Apologies also for the late update.
---

As indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case, the Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels. But more tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for these fighters to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain of command to the responsible fighter pilots.

But these guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, extending the need for approval yet further down. A Defense Department directive of June 1 2001 stated: “In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses […] forward requests for DoD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval.” [1] Aviation Week backed this up: “On Sept. 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. Someone in the NMCC would call NORAD's command center and ask about availability of aircraft, then seek approval from the Defense Secretary--Donald H. Rumsfeld--to launch fighters.” [2] In other words, the automatic scrambling of fighters was no more – the Secretary of Defense now had to personally sign off before fighters could be sent up, and specifically in response to a hijacking. Michael Ruppert wrote that this change in procedures “demonstrated a willful intent to centralize decision-making away from field commanders prior to the attacks.” [3]

But the 9/11 Commission’s final report states in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” [4] They do not mention how recently and intentionally it had become so unsuited.

Of course “immediate response” actions were allowed without Rumsfeld’s immediate permission, and it appears some thought the attacks fit this exception – neither the Otis nor the Langley fighters, the first wave of defense (scrampled 8:52 and 9:30), were scrambled with Rumsfeld’s permission. He claims he never even arrived at the NMCC until 10:30 am. According to the Commission, Major General Larry Arnold, commander of the Continental U.S. NORAD Region said to one of his subordinates “go ahead and scramble [the Otis fighters], and we’ll get authorities later.” So the fighters were sent up, if slowly and with great confusion, and Rumsfeld’s procedure change becomes a red herring, if a telling one.

Sources: [5] Ruppert, Micheal C. Crossing the Rubicon. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada. New Society Publishers. 2004. Page 316
[6] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm. (need subscription to read it now).
[7] See [5]. Ruppert. Page 337.
[8] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 17

THE CHAIN OF COMMAND ON 9/11 {masterlist}

The National Defense Chain of Command in a wartime emergency at the time of the September 11 attacks was: 1) President, 2) Defense Secretary, 3) regional combatant commanders. This was established by the Goldwater-Nichols DOD reorganization Act of 1986, which also allowed that on the whim of the President and Defense Secretary, communications with and oversight of these commanders pass through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS – the nation’s top military officer)

Tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for fighter jets to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain to the responsible fighter pilots. As the 9/11 Commission explained, “prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense).” [2]

This Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels, as indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case. These guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, with Rumsfeld asserting the sole authority to allow fighters to take off at all. This is covered in more in detail in the post "Muzzling the Defense?"

The 9/11 Commission’s final report later stated in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” It became even more unsuited in the days and hours and even minutes before the attacks, and on the morning of September 11th, strangely, the National Command Authority’s chain of command seemed to sprout new links, swap out old ones, and seemed to not be anchored down to anything. The following posts deal with the US leadership response and the flailings and failings of a Chain of broken links.

- President Bush: “There’s one Terrible Pilot:” The accidental President Stumbles into 9/11.

- Vice President Cheney, the Roadmap Swap, and the “Effort.” Clarifying the Record. Did Bush hand Cheney the joystick to control the attacks?

- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order: Who issued the order and when? 9:45, 10:14, 10:18?

- Link #2 AWOL: Psychic Rumsfeld’s Wanderings

- Myers the stand-in: How he responds "when things are happening."

- First Day Jitters: Sliney, Leidig, Myers: Three Defense Links Swapped out at the last minute at Joint Chiefs of Staff (ACTING Chairman richard Myers, as of ?:00 am, 9/11) Benedict Sliney at FAA Operations Center (first day as of ?:00 am, 9/11) and Leidig at the NMCC (see chart below - standing in as of 8:30 am, 9/11, as per a request from the previous day). This is spooky.

In the end, what we got was a startlingly "unprepared" and disjointed command authority that ran something like this:

PRE-9/11 PENTAGON PREPAREDNESS

OF FORESIGHT AND ANCHOR CHAINS
Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
The Frustrating Fraud, January 23 2007
reposted 4/23/07

Although most Pentagon workers in the area hit on 9/11 were still sitting at their desks doing their usual work as Flight 77 came crashing through their office doors, there were well-established and practiced procedures for “exactly” such an event. The Washington Post reported shortly after 9/11 the account of a Pentagon medic who was sitting and reading the just-printed emergency response manual for what to do in case the building was struck by a civilian airliner at the precise moment that happened. [1] But unfortunately these procedures don’t seem to have helped much, given no radar track of the incoming plane, no warning, and thus no time given to implement any such measures.

Dennis Ryan's photo of a mock-up used for MASCAL (slightly filtered for artsy effect)

Among the emergency drills they’d held was one in October 2000, less than a year prior as part of what the Military District of Washington News Service called at the time "several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room." Author Dennis Ryan provided photographs as well for one of the scenarios, the "Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise" (MASCAL) the mock passenger plane crashed into the mock Pentagon courtyard appears to be a big one but probably not a 757 as Loose Change claims. One participant explained as far-fetched as the MASCAL scenario may have seemed, “you have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here.” [2] Navy Capt. Charles Burlingame was allegedly part of this drill, though the charge is unsubstantiated. If you don't know the significance of that already, check this post.

Whether the MASCAL crash was supposed to be an accident or an attack didn't seem to matter - it was all about the aftermath. But in the next noteworthy drill conducted eight months later, the preparations were getting more specifically 9/11-related. As US Medicine magazine, "the voice of Federal medicine," reported in October 2001:

"Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May. In fact, the tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic here in the Pentagon trained jointly in May to fine-tune their emergency preparedness, afterward making simple equipment changes that would make a difference Sept. 11 when the hypothetical became reality." [3]

This is amazing; according to this article, they were looking at a hijacked 757 strike four months before that happened on 9/11, preparations that "made a difference." Of course the best difference would have been to simply evacuate the building well before the plane arrived (35 minutes after it became clear the nation was under attack), or to have worked out air defense plans, perhaps with NORAD, to stop any such weaponized aircraft short of the building.

A possible third drill may have been planned to that end in conjunction with a proposed mid-2001 NORAD exercise simulating suicide hijacking attacks. USA Today famously reported on April 18, 2004 that "in the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, [NORAD] conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties." While nearly all of these focused on threats coming from across the Atlantic, they had the 9/11 targets in mind. earlier drills had focused on such an attack against the WTC, in this case “the target was the Pentagon – but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic.” [4] The original source for this is an e-mail from a former NORAD official obtained by the Project On Government Oversight, which explained that NORAD "wanted to develop a response in the event that a terrorist group would use an airliner as a missile to attack the Pentagon, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the scenario as "too unrealistic." [5] This was in April 2001 POGO reports, a month before they prepared for defense against an unobstructed hijacked plane/missile hitting their building, and five months before 9/11, when they had no capabilities in place "to protect the Pentagon," but at least they had the aftermath covered well enough.

Buth even with just the two drills plus whatever else went in to the process, the Pentagon's bureaucracy had just enough time to get the emergency procedures ironed out and printed before the precise "unrealistic" scenario envisioned four months earlier came crushingly true. But there was apparently not enough time to fully integrate the plan with things like useful warning procedures - a tragically stalled process that would help illustrate Rumsfeld's charges that pre-9/11, the Pentagon was "tangled in its own anchor chain." How conveniently illustrative of his and his colleagues' known desire for a 21st Century "process of transformation" there.

Sources:
[1] Oil Empire. http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html
[2] Ryan, Dennis. "Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies." Military District of Washington News Service. November 3 2000. Accessed at: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlan.html
[3] Mientka, Matt. Pentagon Medics Trained For Strike. US Medicine. October 2001. http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=272&issueID=31
[4] as passed on by US Rep. Jan Schakowski: http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/press2004a/pr4_20_2004mis.html
Also at 9-11 Research: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/post911/commission/usatoday_noradx.htm
and the original still up at USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
[5] Project on Government Oversight. "Joint Chiefs of Staff Rejected "Airplanes as Missiles" Scenario Five Months prior to 9/11." April 13 2004. http://www.pogo.org/p/homeland/ha-040401-homelandsecurity.html

FIRST DAY JITTERS

SLINEY, LEIDIG, MYERS: THREE DEFENSE LINKS SWAPPED AT THE LAST MINUTE
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
January 1 2007
Last Update: 3/19

9/11 was just such a weird day, who could think it relevant that among the other oddities of that morning The FAA was being run by a first-day rookie? Benedict Sliney was just getting his feet wet as the National Operations Manager when four civilian airliners were hijacked amid confused reports of about a dozen possible hijacks. While Sliney had superiors like FAA administrator Jane Garvey, he was called on to make major decisions that morning. He told the 9/11 Commission: “NORAD […] asked ME if I were requesting military intervention. And I indicated to NORAD that I’m advising you of the facts of this particular incident – I’m not requesting anything. I wasn’t sure I even had the authority to request such a thing.” [1] Perhaps he hadn’t watched the training video closely enough the day before.

But was the Chain of Command he and the others at FAA informing any better organized? The National Military Command Center (NMCC), beneath the Pentagon, is the command and control “nerve center” for the military leadership if America comes under attack. While this usually does not happen, the NMCC sits ready, watched over and coordinated by the Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) and is used for other activities requiring centralized coordination – like passing on requests for fighter assistance in case of a hijacking and, I’d guess, coordinating air-based War games, of which there were at least five on 9/11.

Then Captain Charles J. Leidig - acting NMCC Director for almost precisely the 90 minutes of the 9/11 attacks

Army Brigadier General Montague Winfield was originally slated to be in charge of the NMCC that morning, but the previous day he had decided to take some time off, asking a recently qualified but inexperienced rookie, Navy Captain Charles Leidig, to stand in as DDO in the morning. This is confirmed by Leidig’s own testimony to the 9/11 Commission. His written statement was the shortest they received at just over one page, large font, double spaced. It stated blandly “on 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, US Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty […] on the following day. I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001.” [2] At that very minute, the first plane was right between its hijacking (about 8:15) and its impact with the WTC (8:46).

The remarkable request was presumably for some other, lesser, reason. But Leidig’s rookie status (only qualified to be DDO a few weeks earlier) and the emerging crisis did not interrupt the transfer and Winfield left. I can’t say whether this had any operational role in 9/11 or the lack of defense against it, or was related to the air-based war games that have been acknowledged, but both seem probable. And while certainly the timing of this admitted September 10 request is beyond coincidence, none of the involved parties have offered any explanation - it has remained both curiously open and unexplained.

But war games or no, Leidig’s job there wound up more than a drill. As the 9-11 Commission’s final report explained “the job of the NMCC in such an emergency is to gather the relevant parties and establish the chain of command between the national command authority […] and those who need to carry out their orders.” [3] This includes, among others, the Defense Secretary and JCS Chairman. Acting Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General Richard Myers – like Leidig, filling in as of the morning of 9/11 – claims total ignorance of the attack until about 9:40, and the 9/11 Commission confirmed that he arrived at the NMCC and joined the conference in session just before 10:00, over an hour after the attack began and just as it was ending.

By the time Myers arrived at 10:00, regular DDO Montague Winfield had taken the center over again from Leidig, but Rumsfeld, the middle link in the “national command authority” chain Leidig was tasked with “gathering,” was still MIA. Winfield would later state “for 30 minutes we couldn't find him. And just as we began to worry, he walked into the door” at 10:30 – nearly a half hour after the attack was over. [4] While he’d been at the building all morning, officially he’d been too busy loading injured into ambulances for the TV cameras to take his part in the defense, though accounts of his whereabouts vary greatly.


So here is the graphic representation of Leidig’s unorthodox stand-in shift and the results of his work to “gather the relevant parties” during the 111 minutes that hijacked attack craft were attacking the heart of America’s financial and military might. By whatever confluence of factors, the room was kept vacant of upper leadership until Leidig relenquished control and the attack ended. We should be left wondering why the parties weren’t gathered, what was so special about Leidig that he had to be there to fail to gather them, and who knew the day before just how badly he would fail when inserted in the morning?

Leidig did try to do things on his own as Myers and Rumsfeld kept their distance, initiating a phone bridge and significant event conference at 9:29, a line that the 9/11 Commission clarified did not have FAA on it. One minute later, Leidig announced that he was just told American 11 was still airborne. [5] It was also precisely at 9:30 that the Langley fighter pilots finally took off, and so Leidig gave them this new ghost target, which wound up distracting them from the very real Flight 77 as it closed in on his own location and entered radar screens again. The fighter pilots were never informed of the attack plane until after they saw smoke rising from the Pentagon after 9:37. The Commission admitted the FAA was not on the line with Leidig, but blames them anyway: “we have not been able to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information,” and left it at that [emphasis mine]. [6]

Since that day, Leidig has been promoted – first to Commandant of Midshipmen in September 2003, then to U.S. Defense Representative to the Pacific micro-states. Later he assumed command of U.S. Naval Forces Marianas and Navy Region Marianas and advanced to Rear Admiral status. Leidig is recipient of numerous service medals over his distinguished career, none specifically for his service on 9/11, of which his official Navy bio makes no mention whatsoever. [7]

[After I posted this, it occured to me to state I'm not accusing Adm Leidig of anything in particular, nor Sliney, Myers, or even Rumsfeld individually. I only present this in the public interest to help clarify the record - nothing personal.]

Sources:
[1] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Panel one, Day two of 12th public hearing. Staff statements on the military and civilian aviation authorities. Washington D.C. June 17, 2004. http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2001-06-17.htm
[2] Flocco, Tom. "NMCC ops director asked substitute on 9-10 to stand his watch on 9-11.” Prison Planet. June 18 2004. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2004/061804askedsubstitute.htm
[3] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[4] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. “The Terror Timeline.” New York. Regan Books. 2004. Page 456.
[5] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[6] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 26
[7] Commander Naval Forces Marianas: Rear Admiral Charles J. Leidig. US Navy bio. http://www.guam.navy.mil/bio_adm.htm

THE WARGAMES AND DRILLS (masterlist)

HOW COULD PEOPLE SO PREPARED FAIL TO STOP THE ATTACKS?

Michael Ruppert was among the first to draw major attention to the War Games of 9/11, a complex of drills in US airspace confusingly similar to the terrorist attack. These revelations, fleshed out for him by Barbara Honegger, formed what Ruppert called “in my opinion – the holy grail of 9/11 research,” noting how they seem to have scrambled the defense and were probably coordinated by a Maestro working for Dick Cheney. [1] The most high-profile breach of the subject yet was in March 2005 when Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), acting on Ruppert's tips, questioned Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers on the subject. She asked Myers "whether or not the activities of the four wargames going on on September 11th actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks." Myers of course insisted that they in fact "enhanced our ability to respond." [2] anyone who's looked at the details of the air defense that day knows how ludicrous this statement really is.

While still a mystery to the wider public, these curiously-timed drills have received much attention and discussion within the 9/11 Truth movement - Emanuel Sferios, as he questioned the faulty claims of Loose Change and the ilk on the five year anniversary, cited as continued strong evidence eclipsed by the crap “the simultaneous wargames that were taking place on the morning of 9/11, and that prevented NORAD from intercepting the planes before they hit their targets.” [3] For those unfamiliar, here is a basic run-down of what we know and how (this is only partly compiled at the moment and will be edited and expanded over time).

NORAD EXERCISES:
(NORAD = North American Aerospace Defense Command, a US-Canada treaty organization launched during the Cold War)
USA Today reported in April 2004 that NORAD had run exercises before 9/11 simulating suicide hijacking attacks: “one of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise […] the target was the Pentagon – but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic.” Most of these drills imagined hijackings originating overseas and coming in over the Atlantic, but USA Today noted “there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington State that were “hijacked.” [4] This drill was “conducted later” than July 2001, but not after September 11, and the date is apparently classified. Could this actually be the template for one of the war games of 9-11 itself?


1 > OPERATION VIGILANT GUARDIAN: The ironically dubbed “Vigilant Guardian” was the first to be widely acknowledged. The exercise to simulate a “crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.” Three different accounts of first notification of a hijacking indicate that there may have been simulated hijackings in at least Vigilant Guardian.

2 > OPERATION NORTHERN VIGILANCE: An "out-dated" Cold War exercise set up in the arctic with Canadian assistance to watch Russian meneuvers across the North Pole and "deny" them this attack route. But by drawing fighter and attention north, it opened another attack route on the East Coast...

3 > OPERATION NORTHERN GUARDIAN: Also set up in the Arctic and apparently related to Northern Vigilance, mentioned in the Toronto Star alongside it. Otherwise no details I’m aware of and undeserving of its own post.

4 > OPERATION VIGILANT WARRIOR: Mentioned exactly once as far as I know, by former White House counter-terror Czar Richard Clarke in his book Against All Enemies. Should have included "live-flies," actual planes in the air (manned or under remote control) pretending to be hijacked for the benefit of effective training.

In summary, these four NORAD exercises may have helped “jump-start” response on 9-11 by:
- Drawing fighters and attention away from the East Coast,
- Confusing commanders with the similarity of the drills to the actual attack,
- Inserting false radar blips, at least during the crucial first phase of the attack that hit New York.
- Possibly contributing, with continued radar inserts, to the presence of “ghost planes” like the phantom Flight 11 that distracted fighters from Flights 77 and 93.
- Possibly confusing the sky with remote-controlled live-flies.

The 9/11 Commission, tasked with brushing up the Official 9-11 for the history books, addressed the war games briefly. In one of their hearings, Commissioner John Lehman described them as one of the “happy circumstances” of 9-11, yet their final report makes no mention of any of them.

Other Drills (non-NORAD):

1 > GLOBAL GUARDIAN: Conducted alongside NORAD's Vigilant Guardian, GG was directed from the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) center in Nebraska, and involved three E-4B National Airborne Operations Center planes, the “Doomsday” planes of the Cold War intended to control nuclear forces from the air in times of crisis. There are a also a couple of other bizarre coincidences surrounding Offutt that morning covered in the post.

2 > Unnamed NRO plane-into-building drill: First revealed in 2002 - National Reconnaissance Office - air-based recon via spy satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles. Corder connection?

3 > TriPOD: Trial Point of Dispensing, drill for bioweapons attack, lower Manhattan, sheduled for 9/12/01, but had its center set up with FEMA people on 9/11. The TriPOD center, as it turns out, served perfectly as the base to run response to the WTC collapse. How convenient. The main question remaining is - what type of FEMA people were there?

4 > TIMELY ALERT: Force Protection exercise, Army, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Allegedly related to 9/11, but apparently not. But then again... (link coming soon)

5 > Alleged Drill at Pentagon - plane-into-building, Mascal connection, Arlington Fire Dept. Bush expected there - Secret service at Helipad. Honegger and allegations of drill based on Fort Monmouth contingent and Burlingame connection.

PSYCHIC RUMSFELD'S WANDERINGS

Even as he did nothing about it, the Defense Secretary apparently developed a clairvoyant connection with the unfolding attack (at least according to Rumsfeld and a lackey). Just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and apparently unaware of any hijackings in progress, Rumsfeld was talking about terrorism and the future of the Defense Department at a meeting in the Pentagon. He later told CNN’s Larry King that he had said “there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important it is to have a strong, healthy Defense Department that contributes to - that underpins peace and stability in our world.” [1] According Representative Christopher Cox, who was present, Rumsfeld said at 8:44 “let me tell ya’, I've been around the block a few times. There will be another event.” He then repeated it for emphasis, “There will be another event.” Two minutes later he was vividly proven correct when American 11 hit the North Tower.

At 9:36, Rumsfeld was aware there was an attack underway, but reportedly knew nothing of flight 77 heading straight for him. At that time, the Secretary was still in the Pentagon, now hanging out alone with Representative Cox. According to the U.K. Telegraph, the men were watching TV coverage of the smoking towers in Manhattan when the old man said “believe me, this isn't over yet. There's going to be another attack, and it could be us.” “The next minute, just seconds later,” Cox recalled in a press release, “Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.” Cox, for one, was left with no doubt who was in charge, and urged Americans to “listen and unite” behind the President and Rumsfeld. [3]

Action Rumsfeld, dead center (screen shot, America Remembers)

But Rumsfeld didn’t seem to do anything useful with his alleged psychic powers. After his magic show for Cox, he left his 4th floor office and went outside. The Secretary wandered around to the blast site on the other side of the monstrous building and started helping the wounded, well in view of the television cameras. That’s great that he wanted to help, but paramedics get paid to do that. He gets paid to be link #2 in the national defense chain of command in a wartime emergency, and one who had recently upgraded his responsibility for just this sort of event. He could have helped the grounds crew mow the grass as well, but that didn’t have the same propaganda power as helping the bleeding and dying.

Besides, near the ambulances would have been a dangerous place for the Defense Secretary to linger – as a self-described scholar of such things, he should have known that terrorists often conduct a second strike right when the rescue workers show up. While his security personnel were reportedly not pleased with this decision, Rumsfeld himself almost seemed to know that wasn’t part of the plan. He remained there for about fifteen minutes, by most accounts, until his security detail rushed him away.

Richard Clarke offers a different, more logical account. Clarke claims Rumsfeld was in on his Counter-terrorism conference when it started, between 9:10 and 9:25. As he entered the Video center with its bank of television screens, Clarke “could see people rushing into studios around the city,” including “Rumsfeld at Defense.” [4] Upon receiving word the Pentagon was hit by a plane, Clarke noted “I can still see Rumsfeld on the screen, so the whole building didn’t get hit.” [5]

But the 9/11 Commission, based on Rumsfeld’s testimony, concluded the secretary was in his office, getting his daily intelligence briefing as the attack began. After he was interrupted to be told a second plane had his in New York, “he resumed the briefing while awaiting more information. After the Pentagon was struck, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts.” [6] This leaves very little time either for Clarke’s teleconference or a meeting on “the future of terrorism and the Defense Department.” These accounts simply don’t add up.

But we know where he wasn’t. Some officials had already gone down to their battle stations in the NMCC bunker even before the Pentagon was hit (which was already more than a half-hour after everyone knew we were at war), and others joined them around 9:45 and after. By 10:00, Montague Winfield had taken the NMCC over again from Leidig, and would later state “for 30 minutes we couldn't find [Rumsfeld]. And just as we began to worry, he walked into the door” at 10:30. [7] Top-notch 9/11 researcher Paul Thompson wondered “shouldn't Rumsfeld have reported to the NMCC long before? For nearly an hour, apparently no one knew if he was killed in the Pentagon explosion or not.” [8] Up to this point, he actually knew very little of the response going on. The 9-11 Commission’s final report noted “Rumsfeld told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President at 10:39.” [9] The last hostile aircraft had crashed thirty-six minutes earlier.

[1] CNN. “Where were You on 9-11?“ Larry King Weekend. September 7, 2002. Accessed November 12, 2004 at: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/07/lklw.00.html
[2] Cox, Christopher. “Chairman Cox's Statement on the Terrorist Attack on America.” Press Release. September 11, 2001. http://cox.house.gov/html/release.cfm?id=33
[3] Langley, William. “Revealed: what really went on during Bush's 'missing hours'” The Telegraph. December 16, 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F16%2Fwbush16.xml
[4] Clarke, Richard. against All Enemies. Page 3.
[5] 37. Clarke. Pages 7-8.
[6] 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 37.
[7] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline. New York. Regan Books. 2004. Page 456.
[8] See [7]. Page 456.
[9] See [6]. Page 44

Suited Up for Standard Procedure

To this day, opinions differ as to whether or not scrambling fighter jets was considered standard procedure in air emergencies at the time of the attacks or whether, as Popular Mechanics argued in March 2005, this was something rare and extraordinary. In their cover story “Debunking 9-11 Lies,” they tried to explain NORAD’s delays and failures by pointing out lamely that "in the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999 […] it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. […] Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). The ADIZ areas seem to be a sort of moat 'round the castle, where incoming international flights are made to identify themselves or risk being taken out. They run along the East and West Coasts and along the Mexican and Canadian borders. "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann told the magazine. [1]

They would probably have liked to say there were no intercepts at all over continental airspace, but had to cede the one instance after it was pointed out in the factual record by 9-11 revisionists, an errant plane that crossed no borders or ocean shores and yet triggered a fighter escort. On October 26, 1999, famous pro Golfer Payne Stewart was flying in his private Learjet when the cabin lost pressure and killed all on board. The plane continued on autopilot across several states, trailed by fighter jets until it finally crashed in North Dakota. The shoot-down option was publicly addressed at the time: The Washington Post reported “Pentagon officials said they never considered shooting down the Learjet” because, according to a senior defense official, ‘the (FAA) said this thing was headed to a sparsely populated part of the country, so let it go.’” [2] Now, if it had been a hijacked 757 headed for New York after one plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center…

But was this the only fighter intercept ever ordered over the continental U.S.? If intercepts simply weren't done over the mainland, why was an exception made in this one case and this one case alone? Or did they mean this was the only intercept over America that made the news? According to an article in the Calgary Herald-Tribune from a month after the attack, fighter interception for stray aircraft actually was a weekly occurrence even before 9-11: “Today […] fighter jets are scrambled to babysit suspect aircraft or "unknowns" three or four times a day. Before Sept. 11, that happened twice a week. Last year, there were 425 unknowns -- pilots who didn't file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency. Jets were scrambled 129 times.” [3] Was every one of these 129 intercepts in the year 2000 over the ocean in ADIZ areas, with none over the continental U.S.? And in the nine years before that too, with the exception of one famous golfer?

Common sense and some evidence indicate otherwise. One of the fighter pilots that was scrambled on 9-11 said in a BBC documentary on his first notification of trouble “they said the Tower [was] calling and something about a hijacking. It was flight American 11, a 767, out of Boston going to California. At the time we ran in and got suited up… It's just peacetime. We're not thinking anything real bad is going to happen out there.” The narrator of the documentary adds “neither pilot at this time has any reason to believe that this is other than a routine exercise.” [4]

This was at some point before American 11 ended – we were still in pre-9-11 peace time, if the last minutes of it, and he knew to get suited up (that is, ready for takeoff) in response to the hijacking of a trans-continental flight. This sounds like a routine, standard procedure scramble and intended intercept over continental airspace to me. Perhaps the Payne Stewart case is not so anomalous after all.


Sources:
[1] Chertoff, Benjamin et al. “Debunking 9/11 Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March 2005.
[2] Walsh, Edward and William Claiborne. “Golfer Payne Stewart Dies in Jet Crash.” Washington Post. October 26, 1999. Page A1.
[3] Slobodian, Linda. “NORAD on Heightened Alert.” The Calgary Herald. October 13, 2001.
[4] BBC Video. Clear the Skies. First Aired September 2002.